Feeding Time!

[tjdouglas]

Feeding my seahorses is one of the things I enjoy most about having them around. So I am posting some pics and videos here showing my ponies eating at various times.
And please feel free to add your own pics and videos of your seahorses eating....I am sure I am not the only one who gets a thrill out of watching them eat!

 

[tjdouglas]

 

[tjdouglas]

 

[Ludders]

My wife is going on about a seahorse tank. How often do you have yo feed them?

 

[tjdouglas]

 

[tjdouglas]

Hi Ludders, I feed them frozen mysis twice a day. Although if they occasionally miss a feeding they will be fine.

 

[tjdouglas]

 

[tjdouglas]

 

[tjdouglas]

 

[tjdouglas]

 

[tjdouglas]

 

[tjdouglas]

 

[Ludders]

Hi Ludders, I feed them frozen mysis twice a day. Although if they occasionally miss a feeding they will be fine.

That's not too bad then. I mostly work from home, so could be manageable for me.

 

[tjdouglas]

Hi Ludder,
If you have never kept seahorses before, you want to read up on them quite a bit! You need to be careful about any tank mates you keep them with (basically small, slower eating fishes such as blennies, scooters and cardinals generally make good tank mates). You also need to keep an eye on the water temperature and maintain clean, healthy water by doing regular partial water changes (I change 25% of my water every week, but other people use different approaches to this. But this is a fair bit of work to keep on top of). Also, you really want to purchase captive raised seahorses that are already eating frozen mysis. There are a lot of online resources about caring for seahorses, so please do read up on them as much as possible before "taking the plunge." They are really beautiful creatures, but it takes a little more work to keep healthy relative to many other types of saltwater fish.

 

[Claire Austin]

Amazing tank! So many gorgeous ponies! Can you list some of the frags in there, please? I was always under the impression that most of these were no-no's in a seahorse tank, but I'd like to try more than the sponges and softies I have in my tank now.

 

[Claire Austin]

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[tjdouglas]

Hi Claire,

I have been keeping a lot of the SPS corals (small polyped stony corals) with my seahorses for quite a few years. It's the stony corals with large polyps (LPS corals) that are usually an issue for seahorses, at least in my experience. So you want to stay away from placing torch corals, frogspawn corals, elegance corals and the like with seahorses. But most acropora and montipora and echinata and chalice corals, etc. are not a problem unless you are keeping dwarf or baby seahorses. If anything, I have found a medium-sized seahorse can be more of a problem for an SPS coral than vice-versa because a seahorse might decide to keep hitching to the same piece of coral and rubbing off the skin and polyps of the unlucky coral, eventually killing it. But one of the ways to avoid this is to offer a lot of alternate hitching posts.

Some of the SPS corals I keep in this tank include red setosa (a type of relatively easy growing montipora), hawkins echinata, ice-fire echinata, PC Rainbow acro, purple bonsai acro, several different types of tenuis acros and millepora acros as well as several chalice corals. You will want to have good flow with the stony corals. I have several small powerheads scattered throughout the tank to achieve this (rather than one or two big ones that might blast the seahorses into a corner. I also use a Tunze mini wave-box which causes the water column in the tank to rock gently back and forth. Just keep in mind that you want to keep the water moving briskly around the tank, but not harsh enough that the seahorses are being shoved into a rock or corner somewhere.

You might want to start off with an SPS coral that is relatively easier to grow, such as a chalice or setosa or monitpora coral. Then try something a little harder once you see that these are doing well. And keep in mind that SPS coral need a lot of Alk and Calcium to thrive. So I dose a relatively small amount of both in my tank by hand everyday. Also, you will want to watch your pH and try to keep it around 8.2 - 8.3 (but if it drops down a bit at night I find that not to be a serious problem).

Whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best! It's nice to know that I am not the only one who thinks that SPS corals and seahorses look good together

 

[tjdouglas]

Amazing tank! So many gorgeous ponies! Can you list some of the frags in there, please? I was always under the impression that most of these were no-no's in a seahorse tank, but I'd like to try more than the sponges and softies I have in my tank now.

Hi Claire,

I should have mentioned in my previous reply that if you are using a lower amount of light in your tank (and you probably are since you are growing primarily softies at this time) then some potentially good SPS hard coral choices could include the green slimer acropora (it looks much nicer than it sounds), the meteor shower cyphastrea (grows like crazy once it gets established), any of the purple or pink or green stylophoras (purple is my favorite and is a fast grower), pink or green bird's nest coral from the seriatopora family (they tend to be green under lower light and pink under higher light - many people swear this is the easiest one to grow, but in my experience the purple stylophora is easier), the green or pink pocillopora, the green and pink digitata montiporas, the red or orange setosa montipora and as well as most of the chalice corals.

Although many people do feed their hard corals, I find that seahorse poop does a find job of feeding them all on its own, so I would not worry about adding any additional coral food unless you eventually end up with a tank filled with hard corals. Just start off with a couple of relatively cheap frags and give them time to get established.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Tom

 

[Claire Austin]

Tom,
Thank you so much for all this great information! You put a great deal of thought and effort into these posts, and I appreciate it tremendously. Now I will have to figure out how to post pictures on this forum, so I can send before and after pictures!

 

[Tanghoarder]

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